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Current Research

August 2, 2018

My research seeks to better understand healthy youth development. Taking an
interdisciplinary approach, I bring together anthropology’s insights into how
culture shapes understandings of well-being and normalcy and psychology’s
insights into how individuals internalize these understandings to construct
self-concepts. By looking at both the broader social processes and individual
psychological processes, we get a more complete understanding of how youth
across the world develop.

I have largely focused on gender identity and moral development from
adolescence to early adulthood, a period of the life course often marked by
increasingly solidified self-concepts and growing awareness of society’s
influence on the self. My most recent project looks at how the institution of
Buddhist monasticism in northern Thailand mediates boys’ uptake of concepts of
morality, masculinity, and well-being in Thai society.

My recently completed dissertation, “Making Monks, Making Men: The Role of
Buddhist Monasticism in Shaping Northern Thai Identities,” draws on two years
of ethnographic research with adolescent boys and young men who ordain as
Buddhist monks for several years to complete their high school education for
free. Monasteries have long been central to education in Thailand. As adequate
education remains out of reach for many disadvantaged youth—because of their
status as ethnic minorities, poverty, or family problems with
drugs—monasteries remain an important site for accessible education.

This role has taken on greater significance in recent years given Thailand’s
increasing social and political uncertainty. Social changes have led to
concerns over the state of Thai masculinity and boys’ development. In
particular, there have been growing concerns about youth becoming too attached
or addicted to drugs and other things. At the same time, Thais are questioning
the ability of Buddhist monks to be models of moral men who can restrain
themselves from becoming overly attached to material things. I look at the ways
in which monasteries try to address these concerns by socializing boys to be
particular kinds of men in Thai society. My research methods included in-depth
interviews and my own participant-observations while temporarily ordaining as
a monk in a rural village.

In a recently published article, I trace
how everyday interactions between young monks and the lay people who
financially support them construct the very ideals of masculinity and morality
the young monks are supposed to be internalizing.